I wasn’t advocating a return to print media as a way of ensuring diversity and freedom. I am suggesting that a loss of news channels and subsequent centralization on the internet is more dangerous than most people imagine.

From a purely administrative standpoint, it would be MUCH easier for a government to take control of the internet than it would be to control a network of underground printers. Granted, today there are millions of blogs, with just as many diverse points of view, but you don’t have to shut down millions of blogs to control all internet media. All you have to do is control the backbone. ISPs and web site operators can all be monitored and controlled from a single PC or laptop, and many countries have found it a simple matter to filter undesirable content and shut down dissenting media sources with the flip of a switch.

Independent printing presses can be controlled as well, but would require a major administrative effort, and physical house-to-house enforcement. We know governments that have mounted these kinds of campaigns before, so they’re not impossible, but are much more difficult than an internet lockdown, and much more visible.

The internet is too easily subject to the centralized control of an abusive authority. Once that happens, as it has in China and elsewhere, diversity, whether real or an illusion, goes away at the blink of an eye.

However, which do you think is harder to control, the Internet, or a printing press and/or radio/TV tower?

Internet sources are harder to control, and more similar to having the effects that the copier and fax had on the late soviet union.

In terms of diversity, the Net is much more than the mainstream print.

I would miss the readability of paper, and the depth of reporting that some papers still perform.